Hemming: Reflections on Songwriting

Songwriting is pretty sporadic for me, its not something I can just sit down and do at any time, something has to inspire me first.

I pull a lot of my inspiration from relationships and personal insecurities, but it doesn't always form a song the same way. Sometimes I will hear a word or a phrase that triggers an idea for a metaphor that a whole song forms around.

A few of my songs were written when I was spending a lot of time alone and started personifying inanimate objects. I would stare at something like a vitamin and think to myself, "If this thing was talking to me what would it say?"

I know it sounds crazy, like I said, I was spending a lot of time alone.

But the first thing the vitamin said to me was, "You swallow me whole without even thinking now…” Then I built a whole song around that idea—which ended up being about so much more than just a single vitamin.

I take a lot of care with my lyric writing and then the melodies kind of just find the song. I will have several versions of the same song with different melodies and tempos, eventually one will just pop out and feel right to me.

Like I said it doesn't always happen the same, I also have songs that started with a catchy hook and then I just kept singing gibberish over it until something hit me the right way.

I don't really have a consistent formula to songwriting, I wish I did, because my brain is constantly all over the place searching for meaning in everything. Though, I don't think I would be able to write the same songs if gave myself any sort of boundaries.

Check out the video for Hemming’s “Hard on Myself” here:

Find out more at hemmingmusic.com

HEMMING (Candice Martello) is an acoustic singer-songwriter hailing from Philadelphia, PA. After graduating from Drexel University, Hemming continued developing her sound and influence as a solo performer to the backdrop of the artist community in West Philadelphia, and as a member of Omar, the two-piece punk band she formed with close friend Nick Fanelli. While a part of Make or Break: The Linda Perry Project, she was praised for her talent as a solo artist, and split from Omar to further develop her own sound.

Photo by Linda Perry.